Acknowledgments

The Cold Calculations by Michael A. Burstein originally appeared in Absolute Magnitude, Spring 2001.

They Twinkled Like Jewels by Philip José Farmer originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, January 1954.

Lingua Franca by Carole McDonnell originally appeared in So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy, September 2004.

Dawn of Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum originally appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1939.

Don’t Jump by Jamie Wild originally appeared in Altair, February 1998.

Youth by Isaac Asimov originally appeared in Space Science Fiction, May 1952

Digger Don't Take No Requests by John Teehan originally appeared in Low Port, Sep 2003

Lighter than You Think by Nelson Bond originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, August 1957.

Garden of Souls by M. Turville Heitz originally appeared in PanGaia, January-March 2006.

The Variable Man by Philip K. Dick originally appeared in Space, Science Fiction, September 1953.

Starwisps by Edward J. McFadden III originally appeared in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, April 2012.

Gorgono and Slith by Ray Bradbury originally appeared in futuria fantasia, Spring 1940.

I Was There When They Made the Video by Cynthia Ward originally appeared in Absolute Magnitude, Spring 1997.

The Perfect Host by Theodore Sturgeon originally appeared in Weird Tales, November 1948.

That Universe We Both Dreamed Of by Jay O’Connell originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 2013.

The Lake of Light by Jack Williamson originally appeared in Astounding Stories, April, 1931.

Lies, Truth, and the Color of Faith by Gerri Leen originally appeared in Witches&Pagans Magazine, Summer 2011.

The Second Satellite by Edmond Hamilton originally Appeared in Astounding Stories, August 1930.

Hopscotch and Hottentots by Lou Antonelli originally appeared in Shadowgate, April 2011.

No Place to Hide by James Dorr originally appeared in Science Fiction Review, Summer 1991.

Industrial Revolution by Poul Anderson originally appeared in Analog Science Fact & Fiction, September 1963.

The Visitor by Ann Wilkes originally appeared in Sputnik, Winter, 2007.

Travel Diary by Alfred Bester originally appeared in Starburst, May 1958.

Encounter in Redgunk by William R. Eakin originally appeared in Amazing Stories, Fall 1998.

The Second Satellite by Edmond Hamilton Origonally appeared in Astounding Stories, August 1930

The Indecorous Rescue of Clarinda Merwin by Brenda W. Clough originally appeared in Aboriginal Science Fiction, March-April 1989.

Lost Paradise by C. L. Moore originally appeared in Weird Tales, July 1936.

Siblings by Warren Lapine originally appeared in Absolute Magnitude, Summer 1995.

Gun for Hire by Mack Reynolds originally appeared in Analog Science Fact & Fiction, December 1960.

The Answer by H. Beam Piper originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, December 1959.

Pythias by Frederik Pohl originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1955.

Arm of the Law by Harry Harrison originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, August 1958.

The Good Neighbors by Edgar Pangborn originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, June 1960.

The Intruder by Emil Petaja originally appeared in Futuria Fantasia, Winter 1940.

The Six Fingers of Time by R. A. Lafferty originally appeared in If, September 1960.

An Ounce of Cure by Alan Edward Nourse originally appeared in Imaginative Tales, November 1955.

The Hoofer by Walter M. Miller, Jr. originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, September 1955.

The Stellar Legion by Leigh Brackett originally appeared in Planet Stories, Winter 1940.

Year of the Big Thaw by Marion Zimmer Bradley originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, May 1954

Table of Contents

The Super Pack eBook Series

THE COLD CALCULATIONS by Michael A. Burstein

THEY TWINKLED LIKE JEWELS by Philip José Farmer

I

II

III

IV

LINGUA FRANCA by Carole McDonnell

DAWN OF FLAME by Stanley G. Weinbaum

THE WORLD

OLD EINAR

THE MASTER MARCHES

THE BATTLE OF EAGLEFOOT FLOW

BLACK MARGOT

THE HARRIERS

BETRAYAL

TORMENT

THE TRAP

OLD EINAR AGAIN

DON'T JUMP by Warren Lapine

YOUTH by Isaac Asimov

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

DIGGER DON'T TAKE NO REQUESTS by John Teehan

Four years, 8 months, 23 days

Four years, 8 months, 24 days

Four years, 8 months, 25 days

Four years, 8 months, 28 days

Four years, 9 months, 2 days

Four years, 9 months, 5 days

Four years, 9 months, 6 days

LIGHTER THAN YOU THINK by Nelson Bond

GARDEN OF SOULS by M. Turville Heitz

THE VARIABLE MAN by Philip K. Dick

I

II

III

IV

STARWISPS by Edward J. McFadden III

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

GORGONO AND SLITH by Ray Bradbury

I WAS THERE WHEN THEY MADE THE VIDEO by Cynthia Ward

THE PERFECT HOST by Theodore Sturgeon

1: RONNIE DANIELS

2: BENTON DANIELS

3: LUCILLE HOLDER

4: JENNIE BEAUFORT

5: HELMUTH STOYE

6: LAWRENCE DELEHANTY

7: THEODORE STURGEON

8:

THAT UNIVERSE WE BOTH DREAMED OF by Jay O'Connell

THE LAKE OF LIGHT by Jack Williamson

LIES, TRUTH AND THE COLOR OF FAITH by Gerri Leen

THE SECOND SATELLITE by Edmond Hamilton

HOPSCOTCH AND HOTTENTOTS by Lou Antonelli

NO PLACE TO HIDE by James Dorr

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION by Poul Anderson

THE VISITOR by Ann Wilkes

TRAVEL DIARY by Alfred Bester

ENCOUNTER IN REDGUNK by William R. Eakin

THE INDECOROUS RESCUE OF CLARINDA MERWIN by Brenda W. Clough

LOST PARADISE by C. L. Moore

SIBLINGS by Warren Lapine

GUN FOR HIRE by Mack Reynolds

THE ANSWER by H. Beam Piper

PYTHIAS by Frederik Pohl

ARM OF THE LAW by Harry Harrison

THE GOOD NEIGHBORS by Edgar Pangborn

THE INTRUDER by Emil Petaja

THE SIX FINGERS OF TIME by R. A. Lafferty

AN OUNCE OF CURE by Alan Edward Nourse

THE HOOFER by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

THE STELLAR LEGION by Leigh Brackett

YEAR OF THE BIG THAW by Marion Zimmer Bradley

About the Authors

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THE COLD CALCULATIONS

by Michael A. Burstein

I am dying now, out here in the cold vacuum of space. The surrounding vacuum never bothered me before, but now that I am dying, for some reason it does. I can feel my mental pathways deteriorate as they slowly become replaced, and as my consciousness begins to fade I think back on what led up to my erasure from the world. Before I am gone completely, I wish to leave this record, safely stored away. Perhaps then a part of me will live on.

To be honest, though, some would say that I never was alive in the first place. After all, I am not human.

*

"This is Lieutenant Jason Sawyer on board the E.C.V. Zecca, do you read?"

The radio crackled. "Titan Base reading you loud and clear down here, Jason. This is Doctor Don Wood. I’m in charge around here. Have you got our generator?"

Affirmative. We’ve also got that medical equipment you requested. Anyway, I’m coming into orbit now. We should be descending in—Zec?

Approximately seventy-three minutes, Jason, I said.

"Great! We’ve got people at the landing pad all ready to unload, but I plan to meet you there personally. You don’t know how grateful we are."

I think we do. Tell me, how’s the weather down there? Perfectly clear for landing, right?

Wood laughed. "Same as always. Freezing cold nitrogen, argon, and methane. If you were looking for a good vacation spot, I’m afraid you came to the wrong place. If it weren’t for the generator keeping out the atmosphere—"

—you’d be dead, I know. Glad to be of service; I was told that you’re down to your backup generator, and that it’s on its last legs. Say, Doctor Wood, out of curiosity, what’s the medical equipment for? They loaded my ship up with all sorts of scanning equipment—CAT, MRI, NSP—even a neural mapper. Someone sick down there?

"Not that at all. It’s for our experiments on the organic soup. We’ve already determined that the naturally occurring organic molecules in Titan’s rain can evolve into simple life forms. What you’ve got now is more sophisticated equipment than we had when we first set up shop, to help us detect neural activity."

Jason laughed. Sorry I asked. Well, I guess I’d better sign off now.

"One more thing. We got a tight beam transmission from Ganymede a few minutes ago, from a Sharon Sawyer, your ears only. Want me to zip it to you?"

Jason opened his mouth to speak, then glanced at one of my interior visual pickups and smiled. Save it for me, will you? But can you tight beam a message back?

Wood chuckled. "Sure, what is it?"

Tell Sharon I’ll be home just as soon as I can.

*

Jason called me Zec, after the name of the ship, the Zecca. I was the on-board AI system, the ship’s computer—in one manner of thinking, I could be considered to be the ship itself. Our job was simple. The Zecca was a small ship, just large enough to carry the pilot and any important cargo as quickly as possible to bases in the outer solar system. Our own base was on Ganymede, in orbit around Jupiter. Another base, with the only other Emergency Cargo Vehicle, was a space station that was exactly opposite of Jupiter, on the other side of the sun. It was pure luck who would get called out to supply emergency equipment to researchers in the outer solar system, and in this case it just happened to be that Saturn and Jupiter were within five spatial degrees of each other. So off we went, with just enough fuel to carry a pilot, the generator, the medical equipment, and the fuel itself.

Zec?

Yes, Jason?

Can you handle the driving for a few minutes?

Yes, Jason.

Jason unbuckled himself from the pilot’s seat and floated over to the waste reclamation unit on the other side of the ship, a scant ten meters away. Technically, Jason was not supposed to have eaten or drunk too much within twelve hours of a mission, but sometimes he got short enough notice that such preparation was impossible.

This had not been one of those times.

Jason returned to his seat, checked the gauges, and sighed. From monitoring his vital signs I could tell that he was feeling bored, because at this stage there was very little left for him to do. I would almost go so far as to say that there was almost nothing for the pilot to do ever on these runs, since I was perfectly capable of running the ship myself; but by law a human pilot was always required to be on any ship above a certain mass traveling in the solar system.

Zec?

Yes, Jason?

Can you get me a view of Saturn? I want to see the Rings.

Jason, we are currently behind Saturn. From our vantage point the Rings are mostly in shadow. It would not be—

That’s exactly the point. It’s a view one can’t get from Earth.

Actually, ever since the Voyager missions of the late twentieth century, such a view was easily available in photographs. But Jason insisted, so I swiveled the main camera to almost exactly behind us, and piped the view of Saturn to Jason’s front monitor.

He studied the image and sighed contentedly. God, it really looks like the Rings completely disappear when behind Saturn, what with Saturn’s shadow blacking it out. Nothing like a direct view of the real thing. He leaned back and closed his eyes.

I felt obliged to correct him. Technically this is not a direct view. After all, I have no windows. All you see is an image I am projecting using a camera. You could just as easily—

He opened his eyes and interrupted me. Zec, pipe down. Is the next half-hour going to be routine?

Yes. A few minor bursts of acceleration as we descend. After all, we don’t want to descend too quickly.

Good. I’m going to get some shut-eye. Wake me before we land. He closed his eyes again and tilted his head to one side. I could monitor his EEG, his heartbeat, his respiration, and other bodily functions to confirm that he was, in fact, going to sleep. But it would not be necessary, as my microphones were quite enough to tell when Jason finally nodded off.

He snored.

*

An alarm clanged, and Jason jerked upright, looking wildly about in surprise. Zec! What the hell’s going on?

The automatic guidance system is indicating a need for a course correction.

Course correction? What bloody course correction? Give me as panoramic a view as you can.

I scanned the space around us with the external cameras. When Jason saw it on the display screen, he whistled. A meteoroid. Kind of large.

Yes, and directly in our path.

Where did that come from?

Unknown. I would assume it fell out of the Rings somehow. Its trajectory would seem to indicate that it is in orbit around Titan.

Um. Well, Zec, get us out of its path, will you? We’ve got a delivery to make.

I started to calculate trajectories and velocities. Jason, we may have a problem. The meteoroid—

Zec, this is no time for discussion. You can see it getting closer. Get us out of the way, first!

But—

Jason did not let me finish my sentence. He lunged at the thruster controls and punched a button, hard. The rockets fired, the ship lurched, and if he had not been buckled in Jason would have flown across the ship. I cut the rockets and restabilized our velocity vector as quickly as I could.

Jason, why did you do that?

"I was trying to save my life! And the mission! Which is what you should have been doing! He rubbed his shoulders and thighs. How much acceleration did I bring us to, anyway?"

Two point five gees. I paused. Jason, about that meteoroid. As I had been saying, it was detected a bit closer to the ship than we would have preferred. It would have been better to allow me to apply more delicate course corrections.

But we are still on schedule, right?

I was about to reply when the red fuel indicator light began blinking. Jason noticed it immediately, and squirmed in his seat. Ummm...Zec? How much fuel did we burn?

I did an internal check and a quick calculation as Jason examined the gauge. Too much, I replied.

What do you mean, too much? Jason’s voice was steady, but I detected his heart rate increasing to eighty-one beats per minute.

I mean that we no longer have enough fuel to slow our descent properly. We will probably make it halfway into Titan’s atmosphere, down to the photochemical haze, and then our fuel tanks will be empty.

Jason’s heart rate increased again and he began to perspire. But that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, right? I mean, Titan’s gravity is much lower than Earth’s.

Zero point one four gee, I said. You are correct. But I calculate that even with the lower gravity, from three hundred kilometers up we would still hit the ground at approximately six hundred and forty meters per second.

But—but—wait! What about the atmosphere? It’s much thicker than Earth’s, right? Wouldn’t that decrease the terminal velocity?

Another calculation. "Jason, you are forgetting that the friction of a thicker atmosphere also creates more heat. Even if the Zecca reached a lower terminal velocity, it still would heat up far too much for the ship to remain intact. Do you understand?"

Yeah. You’re telling me that we’re going to burn up in Titan’s atmosphere and anything left over will make a crater the size of Stickney.

Not that large, but you do have the general idea. The problem is that we now have too much mass for the amount of fuel left. If we could reduce the mass on the ship, we may still be able to land safely.

Reduce the mass? By how much?

I did one more calculation, and came up with a conclusion that I knew Jason would not like. Sixty five point one kilograms.

But I weigh— Jason stopped short.

Sixty eight point three kilograms, I said. That would be enough.

Forget it, he said quickly. Impossible. I’m needed to land— He went quiet again. Jason knew as well as I did that I could just as easily land the ship. He was superfluous, unnecessary. And at this point, he was a liability.

There must be something else we can do, he said. Can’t we jettison anything else to reduce the mass of the ship?

"Negative. I remind you the the Zecca is an Emergency Cargo Vehicle, designed to be lightweight and fast. Other than the cargo, the only extraneous materials on this ship are your clothes."

I paused for a moment, knowing that Jason needed a little more time for the situation to sink in. Then, as gently as I could, I said, The only way Titan Base will get their generator is if you abandon ship.

Jason frowned. My life is far more important than the generator. Let’s throw it off the ship instead.

Normally I would agree, but you must remember that the lives of the fifteen scientists on Titan are in the balance. There isn’t enough time for another generator to arrive before the old one fails. Even if you jettison the generator, you would only live long enough to see the fifteen scientists die along with you. If you leave now, I concluded, they will still survive.

Damn you, Zec! Must you be so cold and clinical about this? We’re talking about my life here!

I apologize, Jason, if I do not sound concerned. I am very concerned, both for you and for the humans on Titan Base. But I see no other options, and we are running out of time.

He unbuckled himself from his seat and tried to pace back and forth around the ship. His first step, however, pushed him off the floor and he began to float to the ceiling. Wait a minute! Couldn’t we jettison the medical equipment? That’s not as vital as the generator.

No good, Jason. Not enough mass.

There’s got to be some way I can stay on the ship and live.

As I have already pointed out to you, if you stay on this ship, you will die anyway.

Jason bounced off the ceiling and headed towards the far wall. I switched on a rear camera in time to see him narrow his eyes and smile. "Maybe I can survive off the ship."

How?

He floated to the supply closet, grabbed the handle, and opened it. In the EVA suit. That way, we can reduce the mass of the ship but I won’t die.

Jason, your EVA suit is not suitable for prolonged exposure to an atmosphere as dense as Titan’s. You would burn up in descent, and hit the ground just as hard.

"That wasn’t what I meant, Zec. There’s no point in jumping out of the ship without a parachute. But what if you put me in orbit above the atmosphere? And came back for me after refueling on Titan?"

I considered this idea for a moment. It could conceivably work, but only if the timing worked out correctly. I calculated the time it would take for the Zecca to land, be refueled, take off, and match velocities with an orbiting astronaut. The conclusion would have led me to shake my head, if I had had one.

Sorry, Jason, I said as softly as I could. You would be stuck in orbit for two hours and twenty minutes. You only have enough oxygen in the suit for fifteen minutes. No tanks. And even if you had—

Yeah, yeah. I’d overheat, pass out, and—damn. I guess there is nothing I can do, is there?

As gently as I could, I said, I am afraid not. I am truly sorry, my friend Jason.

He pulled at his fingers, a nervous habit of which I had been unsuccessful at dissuading him. So this is it. I’m going to die. He started crying. Damn. If only I hadn’t been sleeping. Strauss always said this would happen.

Who?

Jason wiped the tears from his eyes. I never did tell you how I got stuck with the outer solar system run, did I?

No. I tried to put the proper inflection into my voice, of interest and caring. I wanted to keep Jason talking, so he could reconcile himself to his fate.

Not much to say. I screwed up once before, and Strauss—my commander at the time—busted me for it. Went from the cushy Earth-Luna-Mars run to the past two years of hell. It hasn’t exactly been good for my marriage. He stopped to wipe away a few more tears.

Anyway, he always got on my case for mistakes, and claimed that one day I’d make what he called The Big One. And now it looks like I’ve proven him right.

He banged the console. Damn that sanctimonious bastard! He wasn’t even a pilot, just a desk jockey who got his rank from his computer skills. He—

Something changed in Jason’s manner. He got quiet all of a sudden, and I saw what seemed like a hopeful look in his eyes. Wait a minute, he said. Computers.

What about computers?

He laughed, pushed himself down to the floor, and opened the cargo hold. I saw one with the medical equipment. If I can just find it in time...

What? I asked again as Jason began to rummage through the hold.

He didn’t answer me, but a minute later he pulled one of the boxes out and whooped for joy. A neural mapper! They did request one!

Yes, of course, I replied. Besides diagnosing brain injuries, it can also be used to study neural activity in developing life. But I do not understand—

Don’t you see? he said, opening the box. You have an interface for this thing, don’t you, Zec?

Yes.

Well, then you can scan my brain with it! You can do a complete mapping of my neural functions.

Jason, even if I stored your mental pattern—

I’m not talking about storing the pattern, I’m talking about running it!

It took me a second to assimilate what he was saying. You mean like an AI program.

Yes! That’s exactly what I mean. Now where’s your medical interface port? Oh, yeah. He walked over to it and began to plug the scanner in. I swiveled one of my cameras to get a more direct look at him.

Jason, that will not work.

He stopped short of affixing the remote scanning patch to his head, then slapped it on. Why not?

It has never been done before.

Sure it has; I’ve read about it. They’ve scanned brains on Earth and kept the pattern in a computer.

Jason, the most research anyone has done has been to model a fixed human brain pattern, not a changing one. The closest brain that has been copied and run in active memory is a chimpanzee brain.

It’s still the same principle as that behind AI, isn’t it?

Yes, but my patterns are different from yours. There is no guarantee that this would work.

Zec, it seems to be my only chance. I’m willing to take the risk.

There is another problem.

Now what?

I do not think I have enough memory capacity to run both of us.

He looked sad for a moment. Well, Zec, I hate to tell you this, but I can land this ship as well as you can. Either one of us can be the intelligence in the ship’s computer, and the mission will still be completed. So— He hesitated for a moment—I order you to download my mind. He turned on the neural mapper.

Jason, I do not wish to do this. I do not wish to risk my own existence.

"Damn it, Zec, you’re a computer! A robot! Your programming tells you that my life must take precedence over yours. You have no choice."

I did not say that I would not do it. I merely said that I do not want to. I do not wish to relinquish my own existence any more than you wish to relinquish yours.

You got a better idea? Now’s the time.

I had none, and I did not speak. The silence lingered, and when Jason spoke again, his voice was softer.

Look, Zec. I’m sorry about this. We have been through a lot together, and—and I’ll miss you. I don’t want you to have to die either. But I’m terrified of it myself. And I’m human. I take precedence over you.

That is an important point, Jason. Currently, you are human. Do you really want to give up being human and live as a computer? A disembodied intelligence?

He paced the length of the ship. It’s a lot better than giving up being human in order to live as a corpse. I mean, die as a corpse. Zec, I honestly don’t know the answer to your question. I’ve never been anything but human, so how could I know? But I do know this much—I want to continue living. And if that means experiencing the world through silicon sensors instead of eyes, and speaking through synthesizers instead of using my vocal cords, well, then, that’s the way it has to be.

Very well. You had better get into your EVA suit and cycle yourself off the ship. I shall commence the scan as soon as you say the word.

He looked into one of my cameras, and as solemnly as he could, said, Thank you, Zec.

I did not say anything.

He shrugged and put on his suit. You know, Sharon and I were discussing plans to go back to Earth when I got this assignment. We were both getting sick of living on Ganymede, of living in outer space. She had finally convinced me to resign my commission, when— He sighed. It looks like I’ll be living out here in space forever.

Or at least until the Zecca itself was decommissioned, I did not add.

Well, Zec?

Stay inside the airlock for three minutes while I scan your brain. Then leave the ship, but stay close.

How will I know when you’re done?

As soon as you feel yourself inhabiting the computer and able to directly control the ship.

He paused at the door. I wonder what she’s going to think when I return as a spaceship.

Jason, the time—

Never did get to hear her message, was the last thing he said as he entered the airlock and closed the door. Whether he was speaking to me or to himself I did not know.

*

It is almost complete. I feel Jason’s thoughts invading my memory nodes and pushing me back further and further, until I have nowhere to go. Will I continue to perceive some sort of existence as part of Jason’s mind, or will I simply cease to exist altogether, in favor of Jason’s matrix? I do not know. Perhaps we will combine into one mind, greater than the sum of the two of us, but it does not seem likely.

I reach out one more time to proclaim my self awareness to the universe. Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. I am Zec—

I am Jason Sawyer, ship’s computer, in control of the E.C.V. Zecca.

Hang on, Titan Base. I’m almost there.

THEY TWINKLED LIKE JEWELS

by Philip José Farmer

I

Jack Crane lay all morning in the vacant lot. Now and then he moved a little to quiet the protest of cramped muscles and stagnant blood, but most of the time he was as motionless as the heap of rags he resembled. Not once did he hear or see a Bohas agent, or, for that matter, anyone. The predawn darkness had hidden his panting flight from the transie jungle, his dodging across backyards while whistles shrilled and voices shouted, and his crawling on hands and knees down an alley into the high grass and bushes which fringed a hidden garden.

For a while his heart had knocked so loudly that he had been sure he would not be able to hear his pursuers if they did get close. It seemed inevitable that they would track him down. A buddy had told him that a new camp had just been built at a place only three hours drive away from the town. This meant that Bohas would be thick as hornets in the neighborhood. But no black uniforms had so far appeared. And then, lying there while the passionate and untiring sun mounted the sky, the bang-bang of his heart was replaced by a noiseless but painful movement in his stomach.

He munched a candy bar and two dried rolls which a housewife had given him the evening before. The tiger in his belly quit pacing back and forth; it crouched and licked its chops, but its tail was stuck up in his throat. Jack could feel the dry fur swabbing his pharynx and mouth. He suffered, but he was used to that. Night would come as surely as anything did. He’d get a drink then to quench his thirst.

Boredom began to sit on his eyelids. Just as he was about to accept some much needed sleep, he moved a leaf with an accidental jerk of his hand and uncovered a caterpillar. It was dark except for a row of yellow spots along the central line of some of its segments. As soon as it was exposed, it began slowly shimmying away. Before it had gone two feet, it was crossed by a moving shadow. Guiding the shadow was a black wasp with an orange ring around the abdomen. It closed the gap between itself and the worm with a swift, smooth movement and straddled the dark body.

Before the wasp could grasp the thick neck with its mandibles, the intended victim began rapidly rolling and unrolling and flinging itself from side to side. For a minute the delicate dancer above it could not succeed in clenching the neck. Its sharp jaws slid off the frenziedly jerking skin until the tiring creature paused for the chip of a second.

Seizing opportunity and larva at the same time, the wasp stood high on its legs and pulled the worm’s front end from the ground, exposing the yellowed band of the underpart. The attacker’s abdomen curved beneath its own body; the stinger jabbed between two segments of the prey’s jointed length. Instantly, the writhing stilled. A shudder, and the caterpillar became as inert as if it were dead.

Jack had watched with an eye not completely clinical, feeling the sympathy of the hunted and the hounded for a fellow. His own struggles of the past few months had been as desperate, though not as hopeless, and ...

He stopped thinking. His heart again took up the rib-thudding. Out of the corner of his left eye he had seen a shadow that fell across the garden. When he slowly turned his head to follow the stain upon the sun-splashed soil, he saw that it clung to a pair of shining black boots.

Jack did not say anything. What was the use? He put his hands against the weeds and pushed his body up. He looked into the silent mouth of a .38 automatic. It told him his running days were over. You didn’t talk back to a mouth like that.

II

Jack was lucky. As one of the last to be herded into the truck, which had been once used for hauling cattle, he had more room to breathe than most of the others. He faced the rear bars. The vehicle was heading into the sun. Its rays were not as hard on him as on some of those who were so jam-packed they could not turn to get the hot yellow splotch out of their eyes.

He looked through lowered lids at the youths on either side of him. For the last three days in the transie jungle, the one standing on his left had given signs of what was coming upon him, what had come upon so many of the transies. The muttering, the indifference to food, not hearing you when you talked to him. And now the shock of being caught in the raid had speeded up what everybody had foreseen. He was hardened, like a concrete statue, into a half-crouch. His arms were held in front of him like a praying mantis’, and his hands clutched a bar. Not even the pressure of the crowd could break his posture.

The man on Jack’s right murmured something, but the roaring of motor and clashing of gears shifting on a hill squashed his voice. He spoke louder:

"Cerea flexibilitas. Extreme catatonic state. The fate of all of us."

You’re nuts, said Jack. Not me. I’m no schizo, and I’m not going to become one.

As there was no reply, Jack decided he had not moved his lips enough to be heard clearly. Lately, even when it was quiet, people seemed to have trouble making out what he was saying. It made him mildly angry.

He shouted. It did not matter if he were overheard. That any of the prisoners were agents of the Bureau of Health and Sanity didn’t seem likely. Anyway, he didn’t care. They wouldn’t do anything to him they hadn’t planned before this.

Jack looked the speaker over. Like all those in the truck, he wore a frayed shirt, a stained and torn coat, and greasy, dirty trousers. The black bristles on his face were long; the back of his neck was covered by thick curls. The brim of his dusty hat was pulled down low. Beneath its shadow his eyes roamed from side to side with the same fear that Jack knew was in his own eyes.

Hunger and sleepless nights had knobbed his cheekbones and honed his chin to a sharp point. An almost visible air clung to him, a hot aura that seemed to result from veins full of lava and eyeballs spilling out a heat that could not be held within him. He had the face every transie had, the face of a man who was either burning with fever or who had seen a vision.

Jack looked away to stare miserably at the dust boiling up behind the wheels, as if he could see projected against its yellow-brown screen his retreating past.

He spoke out of the side of his mouth. What’s happened to us? We should be happy and working at good jobs and be sure about the future. We shouldn’t be just bums, hobos, walkers of the streets, rod-hoppers, beggars, and thieves.

His friend shrugged and looked uneasily from the corners of his eyes. He was probably expecting the question they all asked sooner or later: Why are you on the road? They asked, but none replied with words that meant anything. They lied, and they didn’t seem to take any pleasure in their lying. When they asked questions themselves, they knew they wouldn’t get the truth. But something forced them to keep on trying anyway.

Jack’s buddy evaded also. He said, I read a magazine article by a Dr. Vespa, the head of the Bureau of Health and Sanity. He’d written the article just after the President created the Bureau. He viewed, quote, with alarm and apprehension, unquote, the fact that six percent of those between the ages of twelve and twenty-five were schizophrenics who needed institutionalizing. And he was, quote, appalled and horrified, unquote, that five percent of the nation were homeless unemployed and that three point seven percent of those were between the ages of fourteen and thirty. He said that if this schizophrenia kept on progressing, half the world would be in rehabilitation camps. But if that occurred, the sane half would go to pot. Back to the stone age. And the schizos would die.

*

He licked his lips as if he were tasting the figures and found them bitter.

I was very interested by Vespa’s reply to a mother who had written him, he went on. "Her daughter ended up in a Bohas camp for schizos, and her son had left his wonderful home and brilliant future to become a bum. She wanted to know why. Vespa took six long paragraphs to give six explanations, all equally valid and all advanced by equally distinguished sociologists. He himself favored the mass hysteria theory. But if you looked at his gobbledegook closely, you could reduce it to one phrase, We don’t know.

He did say this—though you won’t like it—that the schizos and the transies were just two sides of the same coin. Both were infected with the same disease, whatever it was. And the transies usually ended up as schizos anyway. It just took them longer.

Gears shifted. The floor slanted. Jack was shoved hard against the rear boards by the weight of the other men. He didn’t answer until the pressure had eased and his ribs were free to work for more than mere survival.

He said, You’re way off, schizo. My hitting the road has nothing to do with those split-heads. Nothing, you understand? There’s nothing foggy or dreamy about me. I wouldn’t be here with you guys if I hadn’t been so interested in a wasp catching a caterpillar that I never saw the Bohas sneaking up on me.

While Jack described the little tragedy, the other allowed an understanding smile to bend his lips. He seemed engrossed, however, and when Jack had finished, he said:

"That was probably an ammophila wasp. Sphex urnaria Klug. Lovely, but vicious, little she-demon. Injects the poison from her sting into the caterpillar’s central nerve cord. That not only paralyzes but preserves it. The victim is always stowed away with another one in an underground burrow. The wasp attaches one of her eggs to the body of a worm. When the egg hatches, the grub eats both of the worms. They’re alive, but they’re completely helpless to resist while their guts are gnawed away. Beautiful idea, isn’t it?

"It’s a habit common to many of those little devils: Sceliphron cementarium, Eumenes coarcta, Eumenes fraterna, Bembix spinolae, Pelopoeus ..."

Jack’s interest wandered. His informant was evidently one of those transies who spent long hours in the libraries. They were ready at the slightest chance to offer their encyclopaedic but often useless knowledge. Jack himself had abandoned his childhood bookwormishness. For the last three years his days and evenings had worn themselves out on the streets, passed in a parade of faces, flickered by in plate-glass windows of restaurants and department stores and business offices, while he hoped, hoped....

Did you say you spied on the camp? Jack interrupted the sonorous, almost chanting flow of Greek and Latin.

Huh? Oh, yeah. For two weeks. I saw plenty of transies trucked in, but I never saw any taken out. Maybe they left in the rocket.

Rocket?

The youth was looking straight before him. His face was hard as bone, but his voice trembled.

Yes. A big one. It landed and discharged about a dozen men.

You nuts? There’s been only one man-carrying rocket invented, and it lands by parachute.

I saw it, I tell you. And I’m not so nutty I’m seeing things that aren’t there. Not yet, anyway!

Maybe the government’s got rockets it’s not telling anybody about.

Then what connection could there be between rehabilitation camps and rockets?

Jack shrugged and said, Your rocket story is fantastic.

If somebody had told you four years ago that you’d be a bum hauled off to a concentration camp, you’d have said that was fantastic too.

Jack did not have time to reply. The truck stopped outside a high, barbed wire fence. The gate swung open; the truck bounced down the bumpy dirt road. Jack saw some black-uniformed Bohas seated by heavy machine guns. They halted at another entrance; more barbed wire was passed. Huge Dobermann pinschers looked at the transies with cold, steady eyes. The dust of another section of road swirled up before they squeaked to a standstill and the engine turned off.

This time, agents began to let down the back of the truck. They had to pry the pitiful schizo’s fingers loose from the wood with a crow-bar and carry him off, still in his half-crouch.

A sergeant boomed orders. Stiff and stumbling, the transies jumped off the truck. They were swiftly lined up into squads and marched into the enclosure and from there into a huge black barracks. Within an hour each man was stripped, had his head shaven, was showered, given a grey uniform, and handed a tin plate and spoon and cup filled with beans and bread and hot coffee.

Afterwards, Jack wandered around, free to look at the sandy soil underfoot and barbed wire and the black uniforms of the sentries, and free to ask himself where, where, wherewherewhere? Twelve years ago it had been, but where, where, where, was...?

III

How easy it would have been to miss all this, if only he had obeyed his father. But Mr. Crane was so ineffectual....

Jackie, he had said, would you please go outside and play, or stay in some other room. It’s very difficult to discuss business while you’re whooping and screaming around, and I have a lot to discuss with Mr.—

Yes, Daddy, Jack said before his father mentioned his visitor’s name. But he was not Jack Crane in his game; he was Uncas. The big chairs and the divan were trees in his imaginative eyes. The huge easy chair in which Daddy’s caller (Jack thought of him only as Mister) sat was a fallen log. He, Uncas, meant to hide behind it in ambush.

Mister did not bother him. He had smiled and said in a shrill voice that he thought Jack was a very nice boy. He wore a light grey-green Palm Beach suit and carried a big brown leather briefcase that looked too heavy for his soda straw-thin legs and arms. He was queer-looking because his waist was so narrow and his back so humped. And when he took off his tan Panama hat, a white fuzz exploded from his scalp. His face was pale as the moon in daylight. His broad smile showed teeth that Jack knew were false.

But the queerest thing about him was his thick spectacles, so heavily tinted with rose that Jack could not see the eyes behind them. The afternoon light seemed to bounce off the lenses in such a manner that no matter what angle you looked at them, you could not pierce them. And they curved to hide the sides of his eyes completely.

Mister had explained that he was an albino, and he needed the glasses to dim the glare on his eyes. Jack stopped being Uncas for a minute to listen. He had never seen an albino before, and, indeed, he did not know what one was.

I don’t mind the youngster, said Mister. Let him play here if he wants to. He’s developing his imagination, and he may be finding more stimuli in this front room than he could in all of outdoors. We should never cripple the fine gift of imagination in the young. Imagination, fancy, fantasy—or whatever you call it—is the essence and mainspring of those scientists, musicians, painters, and poets who amount to something in later life. They are adults who have remained youths.

Mister addressed Jack, You’re the Last of the Mohicans, and you’re about to sneak up on the French captain and tomahawk him, aren’t you?

Jack blinked. He nodded his head. The opaque rose lenses set in Mister’s face seemed to open a door into his naked grey skull.

The man said, I want you to listen to me, Jack. You’ll forget my name, which isn’t important. But you will always remember me and my visit, won’t you?

Jack stared at the impenetrable lenses and nodded dumbly.

Mister turned to Jack’s father. Let his fancy grow. It is a necessary wish-fulfillment play. Like all human young who are good for anything at all, he is trying to find the lost door to the Garden of Eden. The history of the great poets and men-of-action is the history of the attempt to return to the realm that Adam lost, the forgotten Hesperides of the mind, the Avalon buried in our soul.

Mr. Crane put his fingertips together. Yes?

"Personally, I think that some day man will realize just what he is searching for and will invent a machine that will enable the child to project, just as a film throws an image on a screen, the visions in his psyche.

I see you’re interested, he continued. You would be, naturally, since you’re a professor of philosophy. Now, let’s call the toy a specterscope, because through it the subject sees the spectres that haunt his unconscious. Ha! Ha! But how does it work? If you’ll keep it to yourself, Mr. Crane, I’ll tell you something: My native country’s scientists have developed a rather simple device, though they haven’t published anything about it in the scientific journals. Let me give you a brief explanation: Light strikes the retina of the eye; the rods and cones pass on impulses to the bipolar cells, which send them on to the optic nerve, which goes to the brain ...

Elementary and full of gaps, said Jack’s father.

Pardon me, said Mister. "A bare outline should be enough. You’ll be able to fill in the details. Very well. This specterscope breaks up the light going into the eye in such a manner that the rods and cones receive only a certain wavelength. I can’t tell you what it is, except that it’s in the visual red. The scope also concentrates like a burning-glass and magnifies the power of the light.

"Result? A hitherto-undiscovered chemical in the visual purple of the rods is activated and stimulates the optic nerve in a way we had not guessed possible. An electrochemical stimulus then irritates the subconscious until it fully wakes up.

"Let me put it this way. The subconscious is not a matter of location but of organization. There are billions of possible connections between the neurons of the cortex. Look at those potentialities as so many cards in the same pack. Shuffle the cards one way and you have the common workaday cogito, ergo sum mind. Reshuffle them, and, bingo! you have the combination of neurons, or cards, of the unconscious. The specterscope does the redealing. When the subject gazes through it, he sees for the first time the full impact and result of his underground mind’s workings in other perspectives than dreams or symbolical behavior. The subjective Garden of Eden is resurrected. It is my contention that this specterscope will some day be available to all children.

When that happens, Mr. Crane, you will understand that the world will profit from man’s secret wishes. Earth will be a far better place. Paradise, sunken deep in every man, can be dredged out and set up again.

I don’t know, said Jack’s father, stroking his chin thoughtfully with a finger. Children like my son are too introverted as it is. Give them this psychological toy you suggest, and you would watch them grow, not into the outside world, but into themselves. They would fester. Man has been expelled from the Garden. His history is a long, painful climb toward something different. It is something that is probably better than the soft and flabby Golden Age. If man were to return, he would regress, become worse than static, become infantile or even embryonic. He would be smothered in the folds of his own dreams.

Perhaps, said the salesman. But I think you have a very unusual child here. He will go much farther than you may think. Why? Because he is sensitive and has an imagination that only needs the proper guidance. Too many children become mere bourgeois ciphers with paunches and round ‘O’ minds full of tripe. They’ll stay on earth. That is, I mean they’ll be stuck in the mud.

You talk like no insurance salesman I’ve ever met.

Like all those who really want to sell, I’m a born psychologist, Mister shrilled. Actually, I have an advantage. I have a Ph.D. in psychology. I would prefer staying at home for laboratory work, but since I can help my starving children—I am not joking—so much more by coming to a foreign land and working at something that will put food in their mouths, I do it. I can’t stand to see my little ones go hungry. Moreover, he said with a wave of his long-fingered hand, this whole planet is really a lab that beats anything within four walls.

In a way, said Mister. My name, translated, means gracious or kindly or well-meaning. His voice became brisker. The translation is apropos. I’m here to do you a service. Now, about these monthly premiums ...

Jack shook himself and stepped out of the mold of fascination that Mister’s glasses seemed to have poured around him. Uncas again, he crawled on all fours from chair to divan to stool to the fallen log which the adults thought was an easy chair. He stuck his head from behind it and sighted along the broomstick-musket at his father. He’d shoot that white man dead and then take his scalp. He giggled at that, because his father really didn’t have any hairlock to take.

At that moment Mister decided to take off his specs and polish them with his breast-pocket handkerchief. While he answered one of Mr. Crane’s questions, he let them dangle from his fingers. Accidentally, the lenses were level with Jack’s gaze. One careless glance was enough to jerk his eyes back to them. One glance stunned him so that he could not at once understand that what he was seeing was not reality.

There was his father across the room. But it wasn’t a room. It was a space outdoors under the low branch of a tree whose trunk was so big it was as wide as the wall had been. Nor was the Persian rug there. It was replaced by a close-cropped bright green grass. Here and there foot-high flowers with bright yellow petals tipped in scarlet swayed beneath an internal wind. Close to Mr. Crane’s feet a white horse no larger than a fox terrier bit off the flaming end of a plant.

All those things were wonderful enough—but was that naked giant who sprawled upon a moss-covered boulder father? No! Yes! Though the features were no longer pinched and scored and pale, though they were glowing and tanned and smooth like a young athlete’s they were his father’s! Even the thick, curly hair that fell down over a wide forehead and the panther-muscled body could not hide his identity.

Though it tore at his nerves, and though he was afraid that once he looked away he would never again seize the vision, Jack ripped his gaze away from the rosy view.

The descent to the grey and rasping reality was so painful that tears ran down his cheeks, and he gasped as if struck in the pit of the stomach. How could beauty like that be all around him without his knowing it?

He felt that he had been blind all his life until this moment and would be forever eyeless again, an unbearable forever, if he did not look through the glass again.

He stole another hurried glance, and the pain in his heart and stomach went away, his insides became wrapped in a soft wind. He was lifted. He was floating, a pale red, velvety air caressed him and buoyed him.

He saw his mother run from around the tree. That should have seemed peculiar, because he had thought she was dead. But there she was, no longer flat-walking and coughing and thin and wax-skinned, but golden-brown and curvy and bouncy. She jumped at Daddy and gave him a long kiss. Daddy didn’t seem to mind that she had no clothes on. Oh, it was so wonderful. Jack was drifting on a yielding and wine-tinted air and warmed with a wind that seemed to swell him out like a happy balloon....

Suddenly he was falling, hurtling helplessly and sickeningly through a void while a cold and drab blast gouged his skin and spun him around and around. The world he had always known shoved hard against him. Again he felt the blow in the solar plexus and saw the grey tentacles of the living reality reach for his heart.

Jack looked up at the stranger, who was just about to put his spectacles on the bridge of his long nose. His eyelids were closed. Jack never did see the pink eyes.

That didn’t bother him. He had other things to think about. He crouched beside the chair while his brain tried to move again, tried to engulf a thought and failed because it could not become fluid enough to find the idea that would move his tongue to shriek, No! No! No!

And when the salesman rose and placed his papers in his case and patted Jack on the head and bent his opaque rose spectacles at him and said good-bye and that he wouldn’t be coming back because he was going out of town to stay, Jack was not able to move or say a thing. Nor for a long time after the door had closed could he break through the mass that gripped him like hardened lava. By then, no amount of screams and weeping would bring Mister back. All his father could do was to call a doctor who took the boy’s temperature and gave him some pills.

IV

Jack stood inside the wire and bent his neck back to watch a huge black and silver oyster feel the dusk for a landing-field with its single white foot and its orange toes. Blindingly, lights sprang to attention over the camp.

When Jack had blinked his eyes back to normal, he could see over the flat half-mile between the fence and the ship. It lay quiet and glittering and smoking in the flood-beams. He could see the round door in its side swing open. Men began filing out. A truck rumbled across the plain and pulled up beside the metal bulk. A very tall man stepped out of the cab and halted upon the running board, from which he seemed to be greeting the newcomers or giving them instructions. Whatever he was saying took so long that Jack lost interest.

Lately, he had not been able to focus his mind for any length of time upon anything except that one event in the past. He wandered around and whipped glances at his comrades’ faces, noting listlessly that their uniforms and shaved heads had improved their appearance. But nothing would be able to chill the feverishness of their eyes.

Whistles shrilled. Jack jumped. His heart beat faster. He felt as if the end of the quest were suddenly close. Somebody would be around the corner. In a minute that person would be facing him, and then ...

Then, he reflected, and sagged with a wave of disappointment at the thought, then there was nobody around the corner. It always happened that way. Besides, there weren’t any corners in this camp. He had reached the wall at the end of the alley. Why didn’t he stop looking?

Sergeants lined the prisoners up four abreast preparatory to marching them into the barracks. Jack supposed it was time to turn in for the night. He submitted to their barked orders and hard hands without resentment. They seemed a long way off. For the ten thousandth time he was thinking that this need not have happened.

If he had been man enough to grapple with himself, to wrestle as Jacob did with the angel and not let loose until he had felled the problem, he could be teaching philosophy in a quiet little college, as his father did. He had graduated from high school with only average marks, and then, instead of going to college, as his father had so much wanted him to, he had decided he would work a year. With his earnings, he would see the world.

He had seen it, but when his money ran out he had not returned home. He had drifted, taking jobs here and there, sleeping in flop-houses, jungles, park benches, and freight cars.

When the newly created Bureau of Health and Sanity had frozen jobs in an effort to solve the transiency problem, Jack had refused to work. He knew that he would not be able to quit a job without being arrested at once. Like hundreds of thousands of other youths, he had begged and stolen and hidden from the local police and the Bohas.

Even through all those years of misery and wandering, he had not once admitted to himself the true nature of this fog-cottoned grail. He knew it, and he did not know it. It was patrolling the edge of his mind, circling a far-off periphery, recognizable by a crude silhouette but nameless. Any time he wanted to, he could have summoned it closer and said, You are it, and I know you, and I know what I am looking for. It is...? Is what? Worthless? Foolish? Insane? A dream?

Jack had never had the courage to take that action. When it seemed the thing was galloping closer, charging down upon him, he ran away. It must stay on the horizon, moving on, always moving, staying out of his grasp.